But that makes no sense, it is whitespace, and it has semantic significance (hence being significant). Whitespace was not significant in older versions of Fortr

But that makes no sense, it is whitespace, and it has semantic significance (hence being significant). Whitespace was not significant in older versions of Fortran, and that allowed you to write DO30I=10,100 which was interpreted as DO 30 I = 10, 100 An amusing bug I saw in Expert C Programming mentioned how somebody once typed e dot instead of a comma, and DO 30 I = 10. 100 ended up interpreted as a simple real assignment: DO30I = 10.1